ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on some examples of ekphrasis in the writings of Italo Calvino and the Danish writer Per Hojholt in order to suggest some of the new tendencies and problems in ekphrasis in the twentieth century. The Danish artist, who is less well-known than Calvino, needs some introduction. Per Hojholt, a radical Danish modernist, wrote mostly poetry, poetics and essays. Throughout his career he engaged deeply with modernist art: Cezanne, Mondrian, but he was especially interested in 'ready mades' and abstract sculptures by Duchamp, Brancusi and the Danish sculptor Willy orskov. Calvino wrote the article 'The Arrow in the Mind' about the Japanese concept artist only a few months before his death in 1985, and it was published posthumously. The mind is visual and visual painting can therefore be like the mind, as the final sentence states: 'The mind can have no other colour but that of Arakawa's paintings'.